I´ve had some trouble with my other computer (not this one); it tends to reboot spontaneously after about 30-45 minutes of operation. Usually it does this when running some game, but last night it went down while I was on the desktop and not running anything.

I have already taken it to the store/repair shop; they didn´t find anything wrong, and it didn´t reboot while they ran it. The difference might be, they said, that their shop has pretty good air conditioning, which my home does not have, and it is pretty warm right now - meaning it simply got too hot for the dang thing to operate.

Does anybody here have any other ideas what the problem might be, or any suggestion for what to do, besides not using the computer until the weather cools down?

Mine was doing the same thing. I think that it was overheating. I took it apart and cleaned everything up and I haven't had anymore problems. As a matter of fact, it's about time to do it again! They do get dirty in there....

Mine was doing the same thing. I think that it was overheating. I took it apart and cleaned everything up and I haven't had anymore problems. As a matter of fact, it's about time to do it again! They do get dirty in there....

I am not enough of a handyman or computer technician to take anything apart... well except for opening the casing. I thought maybe using a hairdryer to chase out all the loose dust, then a duster to wipe anything I can get to.

I once had a similar over-heating problem. The fan on my power supply was failing and thus the computer was over-heating. Once it was replaced, everything was fine. It was very simple to replace even for a technophobe like myself.

I once had a similar over-heating problem. The fan on my power supply was failing and thus the computer was over-heating. Once it was replaced, everything was fine. It was very simple to replace even for a technophobe like myself.

The folks at the store said there was nothing wrong with the fan. The last two times something about the power supply was wrong, the metal part at back of the power unit heated up so much it was painful to touch; right now, as during normal operations, it only gets warm.

Mine was doing the same thing. I think that it was overheating. I took it apart and cleaned everything up and I haven't had anymore problems. As a matter of fact, it's about time to do it again! They do get dirty in there....

I am not enough of a handyman or computer technician to take anything apart... well except for opening the casing. I thought maybe using a hairdryer to chase out all the loose dust, then a duster to wipe anything I can get to.

If you can get the case open, buy yourself one of those cans of compressed air and use it to blow dust out of the case. You won't have to disconnect anything inside (probably a good idea to unplug the power cord though).

If you can get the case open, buy yourself one of those cans of compressed air and use it to blow dust out of the case. You won't have to disconnect anything inside (probably a good idea to unplug the power cord though).

Yes, definitely do this. In fact, buy a two pack. That way, when the first one freezes up and stops blowing air, you'll have a second to use while the first one thaws out.

I remove the casing and use the hoover attachment to suck the £$%& from the grill behind the fans which get blocked and stop the airflow. It's these grills which need to be cleared as the fans won't be able to operate properly. Hold the attachment close to the fan and use a small soft paint brush or large artist brush to dislodge the fluff, be careful not to hit and therefore dislodge any wires. Oh as someone mentioned elsewhere using compressed air is expensive and only moves the dust around.

I once had a similar problem which (looong diagnosis period) turned out to be that, at assembly time, somebody had over-tightened a cable tie, crushing the insulation around a power lead in a bundle going to the main installed hard drive. The power would intermittently short across the crushed insulation, reboot!

I've found graphics cards incredibly tolerant of high temps. One of mine (nVidia M4) reached such a high temp in the box that the adhesive holding the heatsink onto the GPU melted, dripped over other components and the heatsink fell off and was rattling around the bottom of the case. I don't have aircon, so the only cooling was the internal fan in a Sydney summer where ambient temps in my computer room regularly exceeded 105F. Very tolerant card, still working at the time I retired that whole box.

Sounds like Windows is having a critical hardware error when you put a load on it (such as playing a game). The biggest power sucker is the vid card and I've seen some power supplies that weren't able to keep up with the demand after they'd aged a bit.

First things to check:

1) Power supply - Could still be running but not putting out enough amps to keep everything running under heavy load (notably the video card uses lots). I turn off Window's "automatically restart on critical error" so it'll go to a blue screen and sometimes mention where the error was at the moment it died. This is a likely culprit.

2) Video card - If PSU is okay, try the vid card in a machine with a proven working power supply and put under load on something (playing DVD movies can often ramp the power usage up on them, too).

If it's neither of those, then likely your motherboard is dying. These days, the average lifespan of a prefab company's motherboards seem to be 3-5 years. If you get more than 5 years out of an HP/Dell/Gateway/whatever, then count yourself lucky and wait.

If its a Dell, update your video driver - at work, our new Optiplex 755's had this issue, after a MS software update. Further investigation found out that the nVidia driver was not working fine with the Dell on-board video system. Reverting it back to the Dell driver fixed the rebooting issue.

The IT cell uses PCI-E cards, so it wasn't an issue - the on-board GPU units had the issue. Thankgoodness for being in IT

We've also seen the same thing with the HP laptops we now use (both video and wireless software updates). Weird - you'd think that the vendor driver would work with the provider hardware... What the heck is up with (some of) MS' software updates???

A word of caution when using compressed air.....DO NOT SPIN THE FANS with the air, fans will overspeed (rpm) and may even burn out. I know a lot of pc users who thought it was fun to make them "sing" when they reved up. Fans are cheap though, but installation is expensive. FWIW #6996

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